“So that’s why you need the cane.”
“It’s ugly, isn’t it? I should’ve chosen something cool and fashionable. But I won’t need this much longer anyway.”
“How did it happen? The accident?”
“This crazy driver hit me in a crosswalk. I was just leaving campus, and…” She paused. “Is that where I know you from? Northeastern?”
A pause. “It’s possible we ran across each other there.”
“Art history department, maybe?”
“Is that what you’re studying?”
“I should have graduated this month, but I spent two months in rehab, trying to get back on my feet. I still feel so clumsy.”
“Well, you look just fine to me,” he said. “Better than fine, cane and all.”
His gaze was suddenly so intent it unsettled her and she turned away. She saw her father walking toward her from the parking lot, and he was carrying the umbrella. With a stork-like little hop, he jumped onto the curb.
“I’m glad you remembered it,” she said. “It’s going to be pouring any minute now.”
“Who’s that man you were talking to?”
She turned to introduce her new acquaintance but the man had vanished. Puzzled, she scanned the walkway and caught a glimpse of him as he disappeared through the cemetery gate. “That’s weird.”
“Is that someone you know?”
“I’m not sure. He said he’s with Northeastern. Maybe he’s on the faculty.”
He took her arm and they started toward the gate. “Your mother called in a panic,” he said. “The caterer hasn’t shown up at the house yet.”
“Oh, you know her. She can whip up five hundred finger sandwiches all on her own.”
He glanced at his watch. “It’s almost ten. We don’t want to be late for Sofia.”
For Sofia, who would never know that they were there. Yet somehow it mattered that they were there. That on this gloomy day, those who knew her would stand beside her grave and mourn her passing.
“Think you can walk the whole way?” her father asked. “The grass might be a little tricky.”
“I’ll be fine, Dad,” she said, although the damp air made her leg ache. It probably always would. Even when a broken leg mended, the memory of that fracture remained crystallized in bone, the pain throbbing back to life with every change in the weather. But Amy didn’t complain. She kept this pain to herself as she and her father walked arm in arm through the cemetery gate.
Thunderstorms were forecast and Jane could not help glancing up every few minutes as dark clouds rolled toward the cemetery. She’d read that the worst place to be standing when lightning struck was on a knoll or under a tree, and that’s exactly where she and Frost were now, on a knoll beneath the spreading branches of a Japanese maple. From this vantage point they could watch the mourners gathered at Sofia Suarez’s open grave. Months ago, when Sofia had buried her husband Tony here in this same cemetery, did she have any inkling that she’d be joining him so soon? When she visited his grave and gazed at these rolling lawns and manicured shrubs, had she pictured her own eternity in this place?
The distant rumble of thunder made Jane once again look up at the clouds. The graveside service was at an end and there was no reason for Jane and Frost to linger here much longer. They’d been watching for any guest who’d come not to mourn but to gloat or to celebrate, but Jane saw only genuine sorrow on these faces, and she recognized many of them: Dr. Antrim. The nurses from the hospital. Sofia’s neighbors Mrs. Leong and Jamal Bird with his mother. Not many teenagers would bother to show up at the funeral for a middle-aged neighbor, but there was Jamal, somberly dressed in black except for his bright blue Nikes.
“It’s starting to rain. Call it a day?” said Frost.
“Hold on. Dr. Antrim’s coming this way.”
Antrim waved as he crossed toward them, accompanied by a slender young woman who walked with a cane. “I was hoping to talk to you,” he said. “We’re all wondering if there’s any news on the case.”
“We’re making progress” was all Jane could say.
“Do you have any idea who…”
“Not yet, I’m afraid.” She looked at the young woman standing beside him, the tip of her cane sunk into the wet grass. Her jet-black hair, cut in a stylish bob, was a startling contrast to her pale skin. She had the ghostly pallor of someone who has not been outdoors in a long time. “Is this your daughter, Amy?”